More areas are coming to light where work had to be temporarily suspended owing to obstructions caused by incessant rains and floods that followed it. National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) had undertaken the prestigious project of 4-lanning of the strategic Jammu -Srinagar Highway and the entire distance has been divided into sectors. Work on Jammu-Udhampur sector has almost been completed and this segment of the four lane highway was opened for civilian traffic. While work on other sectors was in progress except Qazigund-Banihal sector owing to unresolved dispute in land acquisition and other technical reasons, progress in other three sectors including the tunnels between Chenani and Nashri was going on satisfactorily.
The two tunnels between Chenani and Nashri had also been completed after overcoming some engineering problems that were ultimately resolved. The pavement and other related smaller works in the two tunnels were underway and would have been completed by the end of this month. But with incessant rains pouring down, huge water and debris flowed into the tunnels and thus disrupted the progress of the work. The labourers and engineer had to be evacuated because there was threat to life if waters increased and they would not be able to escape the deadly consequences. It is now two weeks that work in these two tunnels has been halted. At the same time, the work on 4-lanning of the highway from Udhampur to Ramban and then from Ramban to Banihal has also come to standstill because of incessant rains and landslides and shooting stones hurled from the heights of the mountains on to the highway. Heavy machinery and labour force had to be removed to safer places, and work on four-lanning had to be suspended.
4-lanning of the National Highway-1A is a very prestigious project undertaken by the National Highway Authority of India. Despite many obstacles that have delayed commissioning of the four-laned road, the NHAI hopes that by 2016-17 the entire project will be completed and handed over to the Government. This project had to go through many hiccups ever since it’s beginning several years ago. The first barrier was of acquiring the land from private landholders through whose land the road had to be cut. Litigation naturally delayed the acquisition process. Secondly, other departments like forest and wild life were also involved while making a new survey. It took a long time for the Authority to obtain clearance from these Departments. However, in the case of Qazigund to Banihal stretch, the difficulty of clearance from other departments remains to be finalized. While calculating losses to various Government or public undertaking organizations, the losses caused to the contractors and sub-contractors engaged either in widening of the NH or in building the tunnels and infrastructure need to be compensated on humanitarian grounds. Commissioning of the Chenani-Nashri tunnels is likely to take place next month after a delay of over one month. Though the work on the tunnel at Nandni could not start on time owing to delay in clearance by the Wildlife Protection Board, the executing agency is learnt to have almost finished the job on all the four tubes; T4 ( 540 meters), T3 (330 meters), T2 (300 meters) and T1 (210 meters). Hopefully it should be possible to complete the 4-lanning of the entire Highway by the year 2016-17.
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